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STATE SOVEREIGNTY — THE CONSTITUTION- 
SLAVERY. 



,-<.nes 



^J^V" "- REMAKES 



OF 



HON. A, P. GRANGER, 

OF NEW YORK, 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, FEBRUARY 17, 1859. 



The Stales are supreme — are sovereign — within 
their geographical limits, in reference to all powers 
not delegated to the General Government, nor pro- 
hibited by the Constitution. 

Thus far, they are sovereign against the world, and 
they are as much so against the Government at Wash- 
ington, as against that at Paris, at London, or at St. 
Petersburgh ; and of the extent of that sovereignty, 
they, the States, have a right to judge. The States 
have the same right to judge of the extent of their 
sovereignty, as the General Government has to judge 
of the extent of its sovereignty. Thus far they are 
equals. Here I quote from high authority : 

"Resolved, That the several States comprising the United States of 
America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to the 
General Government ; but that, by compact under the style and title of a 
Constitution for the United States, and amendments thereto, they consti- 
tuted a General Government for special purposes, delegated to that Gov- 
ernment certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary 
mass of right to their own self-government ; and that whensoever the Gen- 
eral Government must assume undelegated powers, its acts are unauthorita- 
tive, void, and of no force ; that to this compact each State acceded, as a 
State, and as an integral party ; its co-States forming as to itself the other 
party ; that the Government created by this compact was not made, the 
exclusive or final judge of the extent of powers delegated to itself, since 
that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure 
of its powers, but that, as in all other cases of eompad among parties hav- 
ing no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as 
well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.'" 



<& 

^ 



93 
6 



Such was the true republican doctrine, enunciated 
by Jefferson, and known as the resolutions of 1798, 
He stood erect on that position ; and there he was 
sustained and upheld by the American people, in the 
great republican triumph of 1800. 

With this clear view of her position, New York 
has promised, in her Constitution, to guaranty lib- 
erty to every person within her jurisdiction. If she 
keeps her word ; if she maintains her promise ; if she 
fulfills her her obligations, as she ought to do, she 
will allow no power on earth to take from her j old a 
human being to be made a slave. 

Her Constitution was made prior to that of the 
United States ; and by it she has promised safety 
and liberty to all of whom she claims allegiance, all 
and every human being within her empire limits. 

She had an undoubted right to do so before the 
Constitution of the United States was formed. 

She has never relinquished that right nor surren- 
dered that power ; and, as she claims allegiance, she 
owes protection in return. Allegiance and protection 
are reciprocal ties, and every man who owes the one 
is entitled to the other ; and, with the ever-present 
writ of habeas corpus, she is the guardian of the liberty 
of every person, of every age, sex, or condition, regard- 
less of complexion or nativity, who lives within her 
lines. 

No pedigree is called for ; no naturalization 
requisite ; a foot-print on her soil seals the covenant. 
And here she acts in glorious harmony with the 
Government of the Union. 

The Constitution of the United States and the Con- 
stitution of the State of New York, each for itself, in 
exactly the same words, declares : "No person shall 
be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without 
due process of law." No person whatever. Says the 
Constitution of New York: "No person shall be 
deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due 
process of law," in this State, at any rate. The Con- 
stitution of the United States repeats : "No persoa 



I 

shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, with- 
out due process of law," (article five, Amendments,) 
in this broad realm. And it further says : " The 
judges of every State shall be bound thereby, law of 
States, or Constitution of States, to the contrary not- 
withstanding." (Article six, section two,) Thus 
every judge, State or National, however elevated, 
who heeds not this decree, neglects his duty, forgets 
his oath, and disobeys the Constitution, 

And does not this Constitution say at the outset, 
in its preamble, " that its object is to establish justice, 
to guard domestic or fireside tranquillity, and to 
secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to 
our posterity f " Is that true, sir ? Or is the very 
first — the leading and controlling sentence in the 
Constitution — a falsehood ? 

li That no title of nobility, or bill of attainder, 
shall be passed by Congress, or any State," (section 
nine,) South or North, either to elevate one class of 
persons, or to depress another ; to ennoble the one or 
chattel ize the other ; and especially not to attaint the 
blood of generations yet unborn. 

"A bill of attainder.' 1 ' A law that attaints the 
blood, or creates disabilities on account of parentage 
or birth. A law that provides that the child of a 
slave mother and of a free father * ' shall follow the con- 
dition of the mother," and be a slave for life — and its 
descendants after it forever — is " a bill of attainder." 
Exactly what the Constitution says, (section nine,) 
neither Congress nor any State shall pass. 

This clause of the Constitution alone, if not violated, 
would put an end to this whole controversy. 

Sir, shall the son of a freeman be born and die a 
slave by the taint of a mother's blood — blood that 
flowed through hearts that ceased to beat on the 
battle-fields of the Revolution ? 

" That every family dwelling, however lowly the 
cottage or humble the hut, is inviolate, with its 
inmates, papers, and effects." (Article four, of 
Amendments.) "And that the right of the people, 



and all the people, to keep and bear arras, shall not 
be infringed." (Article two, Amendments,) Arms 
to defend their country, their wives, their children, 
and themselves. 

Sir, is not all this enough ? Shall this go for noth- 
ing. To secure to the people — and all the people — 
freedom, liberty, and right, against slavery, oppres- 
sion, and wrong, Can words be more determinate ? 

Read, sir, as I have quoted from the Constitution ; 
and if lawyers, Northern lawyers, shut their eyes, let 
Northern laymen read the truth and teach them law. 

Sir, Congress is nowhere clothed with power to 
legislate for the return of runaway slaves, and pack 
Northern freemen for the chase, the slave hunt, for 
Southern masters. Mark, sir, the Constitution grants 
no such power, 

In the language of that great good man, whose 
vacant chair stands in the Senate Chamber for stran- 
gers to gaze at. I repeat, " Nowhere under the Con- 
stitution can the nation, by legislation or otherwise, 
support Slavery, hunt slaves , or hold property in 
man ; " and I repudiate the idea with pity and con- 
tempt. 

Sir, it is the political traders of the North, the dough- 
face traffickers of the North, that dicker with the 
rulers of the day, that are most to blame. The South 
has some excuse. They can plead precedent, habit, 
education ; and I am not disposed to underrate their 
force. The North has no excuse. They can offer no 
plea but guilty. 

If the North was as unanimous, as devoted, and 
half as true to Freedom as is the South to Slavery, 
our national troubles would vanish like the dew, and 
our country become what it might be — prosperous 
and happy, and feared and respected by the world. 

Sir, nothing is plainer than is the Constitution on 
this subject. If politicians dare not or will not un- 
derstand it, it is time W\q farmers, the mechanics, the 
manufacturers, and the laboring men, took up the 



6 

subject. They can understand it, and they will un- 
derstand it right. 

Judge Marshall says, to get the true meaning of 
the Constitution, you must take its words. Judge 
Story says the meaning of the instrument must pre- 
vail, and its meaning must be gathered from it* 
words, and the Supreme Court has said the same. 

Sir, the Constitution of the United States is a 
plain, outspoken, Anti-Slavery document. Take its 
words, and not hunt outside of the Constitution for 
its meaning, and there are no two ways about it ; 
and to prevent all doubt or cavil, the Supreme Court 
has established the following invincible rule : "When 
rights are infringed, when fundamental principles are 
overthrown, the legislative intention must be ex- 
pressed with irresistible clearness^ Now, sir, to see 
a man who would say in sober earnest that the Con- 
stitution expresses with irresistible clearness in favor 
of Slavery and against Liberty, would be a curiosity 
entirely. 

How strange and unreasonable, then, to contend 
that the Constitution was made to nourish and extend 
Slavery. Is there a single word or sentiment in that 
great charter of Liberty that favors it ? Not a bit of 
it — not the first syllable in favor of Slavery. 

Foremost came the Declaration of American In- 
dependence — our first great law ; then the Constitu- 
tion of the brave Old Thirteen ; followed and backed 
by the Constitution of the United States ; and all act 
together with a unity and trinity of purpose to main- 
tain and defend the "inalienable rights of man." 
Rights that no mortal man nor human Government 
has a right to abrogate or call in question. 

That Declaration, the strong foundation on which 
our Government stands, explicitly affirms that liberty 
is the gift of God, is above all price and before all law, 
and cannot be taken away ; and the Constitution of 
New' York, and the Constitution of the United States, 
with one accord, respond, "amen." 

Then, sir, where has Slavery a right to show its 



head ? Surely not in my State — the State of New 
York : and equally sure it is that the Constitution 
of the Union bars the door against it. 

Sir, has a State or the Federal Government au- 
thority or legal power to make one man a slave to 
another ? Nobody pretends it. 

Had the General Government, or a State Govern- 
ment, ever the right to do it ? Nobody will claim it. 
Was Slavery allowed by the colonial charters from 
the British Government before we were independent? 
Disallowed and prohibited by every one of them, and 
condemned and driven out of England by the appli- 
cation of the writ of habeas corpus to a single slave, 
and that slave a Virginia negro brought there by a 
Virginia master, while Virginia was a colony of 
Great Britain. 

That decision, by the high court of England, (Lord 
Chief Justice Mansfield,) took place two years before 
the Declaration of Independence, and covered this 
country as well as that. 

Then, sir, how came Slavery here ? It came here 
without law, in violation of law, by fraud and violence, 
and remains here by no better title. 

And now, sir, we are called on by the ruling par- 
ty, not merely to tolerate Slavery, but to legalize it 
all over the United States ; and to do it, the whole 
power and patronage of the Administration is put in 
requisition. To do it, sir, the great leading interests 
of the country are disturbed, and the prosperity of 
the whole people seriously affected, while the Govern- 
ment itself is Drought to the very verge of bankruptcy , 
with little or no prospect of relief while the party 
now in power are suffered to remain. 

Sir, it is the nation, the American people, who are 
the sufferers ; and they must interfere by the peace- 
ful and potent remedy of the ballot-box ; and, sir, I 
think they will interfere at their earliest opportunity. 

But we are told that will never do — that would be 
sectional. Sectional or not, there must be a rmnedy. 



.'But who made it sectional? The party in power, 
sir, have made it sectional. 

They have taken the aggressive, and claimed for 
Slavery all the land that joins it. 

They have urged on the trial, and now let us have 
the issue. 

As the Chief Justice of England said in the slave 
case referred to, when hard pressed for a decision in 
favor of Slavery : "If you will have judgment, you 
shall have justice. Let the black man be discharged/ 7 

I told you on this floor, in April, 1857, and I 
repeat it now, that Freedom and Slavery must meet 
face to face, and try titles ; there can be no joint 
ownership beween them ; and that one or the other 
must have full possession. The time of trial is at 
hand, and we may as well take it coolly and delib- 
erately, for the crisis will surely come, and, perhaps, 
at no distant day. It is as inevitable as the march 
of time or the approach of death ; and let us make 
up our minds for it, and do the best we can. 

The indications, I think, are quite clear, that Free- 
dom must rule, and if 1800 does not so decide, I will 
confess I am " neither a prophet nor the son of a 
prophet," nor the grandson of a prophet. 

There is not much room for argument. If we have 
a representative republican Government, Slavery, des- 
potism, oppression, cannot much longer be tolerated, 
and much less allowed the pre-eminence. A preacher 
of the Gospel will hardly serve out his ten years in 
Maryland State prison for having had an Anti-Slavery 
book in his house ; no other Mr. Underwood will be 
banished, like a traitor, from Virginia, his native 
home, for having been present at a Republican Na- 
tional Convention* at Philadelphia, to nominate a Pres- 
idential candidate for the Republican party to sup- 
port. Wiser counsels will prevail. These things are 
not to be repeated. 

Slavery can make no more Presidents. The present 
one is the last of the succession. No more Presidents 
that will proclaim from the Executive chair thai the 



Federal Constitution carries Slavery everywhere 
nml that he will back it with the army. Om ton 
t ntion 'uarantie.s the writ of habeas corpus and 
ria bv jnn'^d both must be blotted out forever 
or Slavery must retire from the contest, and leave for 
pari unknown. It must hereafter be content to a 
on the defensive, and fight on the retreat, I say tta 
with no unkind feelings towards those of the South 
who may differ with me on this important and trouble- 
some subject ; far be it from me. I know they are 
noTr^ol'bk for its first introduction among us. It 
came here by toleration of the British Government 
S^ tof while we were colomes and ha* been 
suffered to remain, in violation of law, evei since, 
A mtil it has grown to be an enormous and alarm- 
£ev and A threatens the integrity of our 
republican institutions and the very existence of the 

Ul It 01 enters into the entire circulation of the rwtato 
B ystem and poisons every ramification of the Federal 

fltSS. this, that no law can ^ - 

£ ?of "S/g tote, into the Union has to under- 
o-o this all-controlling scrutiny. 
8 X-yes, sir ; « ta,-on your statute boofa .to- 
,Uv fresh from the mint, not a year old pioucles 
♦i y t ' for the admission of Kansas as a free State, she 

ft i^*-, and that too, by J .legal] y-cerU- 
fiorl census • while the same law allows hei to come 
fs as a "lave Stete with half that number, more or less, 

and without any count at all. 

Sir Freedom and Slavery are so opposite aie so 
XS that they cannot be sustained by the 

Sa TLv^niotsit at the same table, and be nourished 
■ by Ae sam aliment, What is meat for one is poison 
for the other. One or the other must perish. 



4 



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